Elizabeth Davies: Please -- make an educated vote

Friday

Oct 31, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 31, 2008 at 1:05 PM

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is it stipulated that we can partake in our right to vote only if we’ve read at least one election summary article in Newsweek. We don’t have to know the candidate’s views on major issues, be able to spell their names or even be able to pick their faces out of a lineup. Is that how the system was intended?

Elizabeth Davies

“You know who has a strange name? That guy, Raj or whatever. You know, his middle name is Hussein? He’s running for president?”

“You mean Barack Obama?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

OK, so I didn’t actually hear that conversation. I read about it on the Internet. But for however accurate that story may or may not be, it illustrates a frightening point: Some Americans are downright clueless.

Thanks to our forefathers (and foremothers, many years later), nearly every American enjoys the right to vote. It comes with only three caveats: You have to be 18 years old, you have to be an
American citizen and you have to be able to prove it.

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is it stipulated that we can partake in our right to vote only if we’ve read at least one election summary article in Newsweek. We don’t have to know the candidate’s views on major issues, be able to spell their names or even be able to pick their faces out of a lineup. We just have to show up at the voting booth, and our opinion matters just as much as the guy who can rattle off voting records like they’re sports scores.

Is that how the system was intended? Is it OK for someone who knows nothing about the political system to cast a vote based on a flip of the coin?

It might be legal in our country, but that doesn’t make it OK in my book. Voting might be a Constitutionally provided right, but it’s more than that. It’s a responsibility.

Encouraging people to get out and vote is particularly en vogue right now. Everyone from Samuel L. Jackson to Leonardo DiCaprio is pressing the public — young people in particular — to hit the voting booths come Tuesday.

Don’t get me wrong: That’s a good thing. We need more people taking part in democracy for it to be truly successful.

However, simply having more voters doesn’t actually reflect a functional democratic society. Those voters need to have some intelligent thought behind their decisions. They can’t be like the woman I recently read about — in a newspaper, if that makes it more believable — who was absolutely convinced that she would vote for the Obama/Palin ticket. I would quite like to know how she ends up voting on Nov. 4.

Now, I’m not a political junkie. Far from it, in fact. When friends start talking politics at the dinner table, my mind tends to wander onto more appetizing topics: dirty diapers, malnourished orphans, a plague. My inner journalist rolls her eyes every time I watch yet another television commercial that talks more about the opponent’s failures than the candidate’s qualifications.

Even so, I’ve made a point to tolerate enough campaign speeches and election articles to get a basic grasp on what each candidate believes — at least on the issues that are important to me. A bottle of Tums by my side, I’ve waded through talk of health care, abortion, gay marriage, military presence in Iraq and economic survival. And come Tuesday, I’ll be prepared to cast my vote.

If we learned only one thing from our last presidential election, it is that each vote counts. Don’t throw yours away.

Find out more about the candidates and their stand on various issues at Project Vote Smart, votesmart.org, or the League of Women Voters, lwv.org.